Long Way Home (Thunder Road, #3)(24)

Yet the adrenaline coursing through my veins doesn’t feel like relief. My back itches like someone is watching, my entire body vibrates with the sense we’re about to be ambushed—as if I’ll never be safe again.

The wind blows through the trees, making a clapping sound, and the breeze is cold against my cheeks. Chevy’s hand is warm and strong. We watch Justin’s car leave. Rocks cracking under the pressure of the tires. Dirt blowing up as a cloud in the wind.

The dust settles, the car retreats around a bend, the sound of the rocks being driven over and the purring engine fade yet we still stare in the direction Justin disappeared. As if we’re both frightened to turn our backs and tempt fate to drag us back to the basement prison.

Chevy pulls on my hand. “Let’s go.”

He steps forward, I walk with him and unbelievable pain shoots through my knee. I falter, clinging to Chevy as I try not to fall to the ground. The pain then leaks into my blood and every bruise, every cut throbs in agony. I gasp, confused how I had gone from no pain to sheer torture.

Chevy steadies me. “You okay?”

I nod, but I’m not, and from the sympathetic way he looks at me, he’s aware. With a sturdy arm around my waist, we go forward. Each step causes my muscles to twinge, my knee to give, bringing me to a new level of exhaustion, but each of those steps brings me closer to home, brings Chevy closer to home, and he needs to be home.

He needs stitches for the gash on his head, he needs a doctor to look at the eye that’s so swollen I’m sure he can barely see and he needs to be safe and secure and as far from the Riot as possible.

We hobble up a hill and that’s when we see them—Eli, Cyrus, Pigpen and a whole group of men. They’re leaning against their motorcycles, but the moment they see us, they straighten and some of them are on the move in our direction. Chevy’s grip tightens on me and I lean into him. My eyes water and it becomes too blurry to see. We made it. We’re going home.

Chevy starts down the hill, but this time when my knee gives, I go down with it. The hard ground is honestly a blessing and my fingers touch the grass and dirt like it’s a pillow and a bed. I don’t hunker down, but I consider it. Dream of resting my head and going to sleep. Then I can begin to pretend this was all just a bad dream, an awful dream.

“We’re almost there.” Chevy crouches beside me.

I’m too tired to talk. Too afraid if I do, then I’ll discover that this part of the nightmare—the part where it might end well—was a dream. I’ll twitch my finger, awaken and be back in the basement. I glance up at Chevy and the sun beaming behind him hurts my eyes.

“I’m not going without you.” Chevy slides his arms under my knees, along my back, and lifts me, cradling me against his chest as he walks toward his family. I’m too exhausted to argue. Only have the strength to slip my arms around his neck and rest my head in the crook of his neck.

“We’re almost there,” he says again. “Almost home. They see us and they’re coming for us now. We’re going to be okay.”

Okay repeats in my head, circles over and over again. Somehow I don’t think Chevy and I will find a way to be okay again.





CHEVY

THE NURSES SEPARATED me and Violet in the ER and I’m about to lose my mind. Being wheeled from place to place, IV in my arm keeping me grounded most of the day, too much time wasted in an MRI machine searching for a concussion that didn’t exist. Five staples in my head later and I’m wheeled back to my room with promises of being discharged.

The nurses are pissed Pigpen gave me a fresh pair of jeans and a T-shirt to change into. The hospital gown wasn’t cutting it.

I did allow the staff to numb my head for the staples, but I’ve refused pain medication. Don’t need my brain fogged. Need to think straight. Need to be in control.

I’m seventeen, which means pediatric ward, and I’m having a hard time digesting pictures of clowns holding kittens. I’ve had a gun held on me by an illegal motorcycle club. While having the hell beat out of me, I caught glimpses of the only girl I’ve ever loved running into the line of fire...for me.

When that bang reverberated against my skin, my soul crumbled because I thought she was dead. I thought I was dead. And if I wasn’t dead, I wasn’t sure how I could go on living without her. Kittens and clowns don’t make sense to me anymore. Feels abnormal in dark reality.

The aide turns the corner and outside my room are men in Reign of Terror black leather cuts and my mother. From the way she’s shaking her head and finger, black hair swinging from side to side, she’s furious and she has a right to be. I went missing, I scared her and Mom doesn’t handle scared well.

“I want you out of his life.” Mom points in the direction of the elevators. “I want you gone. I want all of you gone.”

“I understand you’re upset, Nina.” Cyrus holds up his hands in an act of submission. “But I have every right to be here.”

“Right?” Mom’s eyes bulge from her head. “You have no rights.”

Not in the mood to play referee, I place a hand on the tire of my wheelchair. The aide looks down at me and I say, “That’s my dysfunction in the hallway. Mind leaving me here for a few?”

He’s a young guy, probably in his twenties. With an expression of you-would-have-fared-better-being-born-to-wolverines, he backs me up without the beeping and offers me a weak fist bump before heading to the nurses’ station.